Just when you thought the over 70,000 phone apps on the market covered every single entertainment, scientific or news-spreading purpose possible, the need for new applications grows.
Last week, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hosted a scientific convention focused on a new field: the human-environment mobile-based interactions.
Cell phones, iPods and any other portable computing device are about to become the ultimate low-budget environmental monitoring tool for researchers worldwide.
Dale Joachim, a visiting scientist at MIT’s Media Lab, organized the event, with funding from the National Science Foundation. “How do we rethink human-environment interactions in light of these mobile devices?’’
For instance, Carlos Corrada-Bravo, director of the Computer Science Program at the University of Puerto Rico, programmed his iPod Touch to record birds and frogs in remote areas of Puerto Rico and Hawaii. He modified the consumer device by adding an extra battery and an off-the-shelf microphone. A less than $20 investment allows professor Corrada-Bravo to record the sounds of the forest and study the fauna.
Richard Fletcher, a Media Lab research scientist, envisions instead a cheap low-wattage system incorporating sensors in order to detect soil moisture or pH, wired to data-storage hubs with Bluetooth radios. Field assistants will be able to collect and forward scientific data using just a cell phone.
The era of scientific expeditions with porters carrying heavy machinery deep into the forest may soon come to an end.
As fascinating as the new technological frontiers may seem, the scientific community raised some concerns, such as a potential lack of bandwidth in remote areas, battery supplies, waste of electricity, etc.
Joachim, one of the strongest supporters of this direction, does not dismiss the challenges, but believes they can be overcome. In this new “digital ecology’’ approach, millions of cell phones can interact with powerful servers and provide a never-before-seen flow of data. “Now we have a different beast,’’ Joachim said. “We have a beast with a thousand eyes.’’
